BACKGROUND: The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Ending Unequal Treatment report emphasizes immediate actions to eliminate health inequities (i.e., solutions-oriented health inequity research), versus incrementally advancing health equity. Nurse scientists are uniquely positioned to lead national efforts to eliminate health inequities.
PURPOSE: To outline nursing science’s contributions to solutions-oriented health inequity research, highlight opportunities and challenges for nursing leadership, and key competencies for which workforce support infrastructure is needed.
METHODS: We draw on the landmark 2024 Ending Unequal Treatment report, supplemented by a review of the literature on scientific nursing-specific workforce challenges.
DISCUSSION: We identify strategies for sustaining and advancing nursing science’s leadership in solutions-oriented health inequity research, including objectives, competencies, and programmatic elements needed to support current and future nurse investigators.
CONCLUSION: Bolstering the nursing scientific workforce in solutions-oriented health inequity research will elevate the role of nursing science in eliminating health inequities and improving population health.
A roadmap for the nursing scientific workforce to eliminate health and healthcare inequities
Nursing Outlook, 72 (6), 102272. doi: 10.1016/j.outlook.2024.102272.